


Ultramarine

by kuroiyousei



Category: Gundam Wing
Genre: Canon Setting, Introspection, Language (religious), M/M, POV: Duo, Pre-relationship story for main couple(s), Queer Duo, Queer Heero
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-07
Updated: 2015-09-07
Packaged: 2020-05-30 16:31:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19407088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kuroiyousei/pseuds/kuroiyousei
Summary: After the war, Duo can’t seem to figure out what to do with himself.





	Ultramarine

  


The thing that had struck him most about Earth the first time he'd gone there was the sky. 

It wasn't the color that surprised him, since you grew up with that. Pictures, narratives, movies... _everything_ reiterated that the sky was blue, with a dogmatic firmness to rival the skepticism of the most visual colony native to whom the sky was indisputably either star-studded black or just... the rest of the colony. No, it wasn't the blueness that hit him, but rather the size and the openness. No camerawork could ever really capture the apparent endlessness, the almost _space-like_ forever of this sky. No wonder people from Earth didn't appreciate space as well as they should: they had their own version, and you could _breathe_ in it. 

To Duo that sky meant freedom. He'd have thought it would be overwhelming and agoraphobic, but it turned out he was much like a goldfish (or whatever fish it was that kept getting bigger if you put it in a bigger container). Under that sky he felt like he could do anything. And that was the urge he felt: to travel, to go, to _do_... but there had been that stupid war. He'd promised himself that, as soon as it was all over, he _would_ be free, would live the way he longed to under that sky, at least for a while. 

Hilde had invited him to come work the scrap lot with her, but there might be time for that later. Howard had welcomed him back to the salvage business, but Duo wasn't entirely sure he was interested. And Heero had wanted him to... well, Heero had just wanted him. Oh, he'd phrased it like a request for Duo to come do Preventer work as his partner, but the underlying appeal had been far more concerned with their personal lives. It had not been a comfortable conversation. 

"I don't want to be tied down to anything right now," Duo had told him. "I've been taking orders so long, I just want to be free for a while, you know?" 

Heero had looked taken aback, maybe even a little hurt. If Duo'd had to guess why, he would have thought it was because he had just likened their potential relationship to accepting terrorist missions from a mad scientist in space. 

"It's nothing personal," he'd hastened to add. 

"Nothing personal," Heero had echoed dully. 

Feeling that every word he said was digging him deeper down a hole he hadn't even realized was in his path until he'd tumbled right into it, Duo had tried to explain. "I mean it's not _you_. I have to-- I need to _do_ things. I need to stop being a soldier for a while." 

At this Heero had given him a skeptical look, as if the concept of not being a soldier was so alien it bordered on the absurd. 

"I just need to be free for a while," Duo had insisted, and even in his own ears it hadn't really made much sense. 

But Heero had nodded slowly and said, "I see." 

And Duo had wanted to say something else, to apologize for hurting him, to try again to explain, to let him know that, if he _did_ have to be tied down, there was no one else in the world that... But words had failed him, and eventually Heero had left, and Duo had set out to taste freedom and live life his own way. 

Somehow this had ended up meaning 'live life as a trucker.' 

It was extremely unromantic and not really what he'd envisioned, but it _did_ involve going places and doing things. Mostly roads and warehouses and truck stops, mostly loading and unloading, mostly crashing hard (his body, not his truck) at cheap motels that reminded him of shared missions back in the gundam days undercover with Heero, only without the benefit of actually having Heero around. That still counted as tasting freedom, didn't it? 

Only then there had been the stupid hostage situation in that one stupid town. He hadn't meant to get involved, wasn't really sure how he _had_ gotten involved, but it had just kinda happened... the local force wasn't very good at dealing with that sort of thing, and Duo _was_ very good at dealing with that sort of thing (though, he had to admit, when it came time to try to soothe hostages, he wished he had a bit of Heero's endless logical calm), and, next thing he knew, he was a hero, and it was a chore just to get out of being awarded keys to the city. 

And then by total coincidence he'd somehow gotten dragged into that gang thing in practically the next town. OK, well, it had technically been a couple towns away and an entirely different country, but it was within a few _days_ of the previous incident. The little rival criminal groups were wreaking havoc on legitimate businessmen like honest Duo, and their little street fights were making life (particularly the act of retaining it) difficult for everyone; he just couldn't stay out of it. 

So that one had been his own fault for sticking his neck out, but it _hadn't_ been his fault when some radical had attempted to assassinate the president of the next city-state he'd visited right when he happened to be in a good place to stop it. Well, maybe it was his fault for _choosing_ to stop it, but you didn't just let presidents get assassinated in front of you if there was something you could do about it. A memory, hailing from early in his acquaintance with Heero, of a horrified voice and a nearly suicidal demeanor in response to a mistaken assassination simply would not let him. 

He hadn't realized the entire world was still so damn violent, even after everything that had happened. And he'd had no idea that violence was going to be so damn difficult to stay out of. He was a _trucker_ , for god's sake; he didn't need to be jumping on people out of windows, wrenching guns from their hands, maybe laughing a bit at their surprise but then giving a longsuffering sigh when they, seeing how young and fresh-faced he still somehow was, decided his success thus far must have been luck and it was OK to attack him despite the fact that he was now _holding their gun_. What he _did_ need to be doing was getting his deliveries done without wondering whether he couldn't perhaps help prevent the recurrence of this kind of incident if he just had a brief coaching session with the local authorities. Not that they were likely to listen to him, despite his impressive past achievements, given his lack of current credentials. 

And now he lay atop his trailer staring into a fading sky and wondering what freedom _really_ meant. Whatever it was, he was pretty sure he didn't have it. 

He'd been trying to avoid admitting this to himself for a while: that his attempt at living his own life, at doing the _doing_ he'd been longing for and seizing at the freedom he'd always seen hazily in the distance during the war, was failing spectacularly. It shouldn't have been difficult to admit... some things just didn't work; it wasn't the end of the world. Perhaps it was the thought of everything he'd turned down and walked away from to make an experiment that had subsequently miserably failed that called up this stubborn reluctance to admit that this wasn't working and he should probably give it up. 

Against this idea he squeezed his eyes tight closed, shutting out the sight of a sky and an offer of freedom that he, apparently, was unable to grasp. The sun was almost gone anyway; that freedom would soon be invisible to him as the sky turned colony-black, and he wasn't sure he could stand to see it right now. 

Why couldn't he get away from what he'd been through and what he'd been, both during the war and leading up to it -- why couldn't he rise above all of that, be _free_ of it? He couldn't, evidently, build a new life for himself, and at the same time couldn't deal nearly as efficiently as he had during all his life preceding this with the remnants that clung of everything that had gone before. He was caught in between, trapped, and he didn't even know exactly what by. It was frustrating, dismaying... There was something he just wasn't doing right, something that, if he could only recognize and rectify, would make everything else snap into place and this troublesome unfulfillment begin to fade. 

When he opened his eyes again, his next move was to catch his breath suddenly, harshly. The memory of a different set of eyes -- no, not one memory, but a multitude of memories of those eyes, in every variation of expression and condition -- was suddenly before him... because the sky above him -- that vast and beautiful sky, that expansive, unending, unsurpassable sky that had always, _always_ meant freedom to him -- the sky, in the gradual wake of sunset, had turned a very precise shade of blue that he would never forget. 

And it occurred to him abruptly that having responsibilities, that answering to an authority you specifically chose to place yourself under, did not necessarily entail a lack of freedom... that there were different _types_ of freedom, and one of them definitely involved putting yourself into the right kind of situation so that what it turned out you were going to be doing anyway got done right. An establishment and taking orders and following protocol might seem restrictive, but when it gave him the opportunity to do what he thought needed to be done in the most effective manner -- not to mention the chance to be with someone he'd missed a lot more than he cared to admit -- it was really just a means to an end, wasn't it? 

This was no more than had always been the case. The sky had always turned that color just after sunset; he'd always longed to go back; he'd always needed that specific type of freedom. It had taken him a while to see it; that was all -- to be looking up and out, to have the correct train of thought already running, just at the right instant. 

Though it was a distended moment of realization that seemed forever long, stunning, still, and silent, its immediate aftermath was all activity. Duo scrambled up and flung himself down over the side of his trailer, catching at the support bar beside the door and tugging the latter open before his fall had even entirely stopped. Mere seconds later he was buckled in with the engine roaring to life beneath him. 

His head was awhirl with thoughts -- contract details, who was expecting him where and when, the quickest cross-country routes, who might be in need of a rig like this right about now, and whether or not what he'd at one point considered a failed experiment might better be looked at as a breather between other phases of life -- a spinning storm of ideas, crackling with the lightning of excitement and realization, whose distant eye, the one clear spot beyond the churning vortex, winked freedom at him. As he stepped on the gas he pictured himself shooting out, as if from a tunnel, into that clarity, as if onto a placid lake from the plunging rapids leading to it. And he headed back, back to what he probably should have been doing all along... back to Preventer Headquarters... back to where his freedom lay waiting in Heero's eyes.


End file.
